Cats & Dogs

I stay inside

Although the sun shines. She seduces me – the full glory of light –
And traps me into the corner. As I close the curtains they dance
For me, and in my soporific state (who taught me that word?
Oh I remember, it’s the mysterious French girl whose words
whirl inside me erratically, without treading on the traces of reality;
I bet she is asleep right now, dreaming of another world)
they unveil their secrets for me.

Epiphany, I can see you, I will trust in you no more.
I think about blinding myself but that means I would be
Harnessed by your despair, that you awoke in me, that will not rest.

I’ve never seen buildings as tall as these. The devils throw rocks
At me from behind their wall of mist, as high as my enslavement,
But they never hit me anymore. The angels scream at me from
Behind the same clouds, sometimes ringing my ears deaf,
But the distance is too great to carry a message with our earthly voices.
All of them, way up there, on that first building to your right
Have consumed their own fate like cattle. But I can see them still.

The curtains have stopped dancing by long, serenely
They flatten their corruptive body, awaiting my approval.
And it’s this very moment – in control of everything around –
When the raindrops start a riot with the vibrant cold
And heavy darkness that I feel content and pleased.
I’m not to be seduced by the lucency of your kind any longer.
Admittedly black in soul, I now open the garden doors

And march within the night.

Stop, Slow Down.

You step into the white fluorescent light
That my sight had so intensely captured,
And harvest spring fruits before my eyes;
Each single fruit piece is your gracious body.
But the white stream moves away and follows its path after
The courageous jet-fighter, with thousand feet per second
High in the air,
As do my eyes.
The white clouds seem to be struggling
With each other to go into whatever direction
As fast as possible, taking all sorts of forms.
Every small piece is another secret of beauty to me.
Every second one awakes anew, and builds
Its own peaceful kingdom in the skies.

I saw the plane descend behind the defoliating treetops,
And you disappeared the same moment
into the intangible haziness of the smoke.

The natural beauty of a stream of water
Made me finally park my car,
And exhale my youth.

In nowhere and everywhere I found myself;
One physical, the other spiritual,
And together lost in happiness.

I took it all with me to the chosen spotless site
You had so clearly and vividly recognized
From your collection of dreams.

It were those dreams that we had built on,
Those dreams that we cared for,
In those dreams we believed.

There, in my head a piano sounded
And I felt our dream
Awake.


There, on the banks of that river,
You gave birth
To our dream,

And
We walked with it and fed it
Along the shores of time.

Chez Diable

Solemnly the silence hovers through my entangled hair
Which had never felt so original before.
But it was not only my hair that felt out of place.
My clothes – compared to theirs, which are reminiscent to me of that time I played ghost
With my little sister; but the drawer with the sheets was too high for us
So we played with the old curtains –
Had never looked more modern than in this environment.
Nonetheless, no-one noticed my presence in the anonymity of this place of Hope
That looked so cold and dead to me -
Or rather found me worthy enough to notice.
Maybe they were all connected to Him;
I mean, for God’s sake, what do I know?
I am only here to bring the red wine.

I turn around, close the heavy, mahogany-adorned monastery door
And walk to the always attractively cosy-looking café ‘Chez Diable’ –
And I noticed for the very first time
That the door is decorated with the same mahogany woodwork as the monastery door –
To deliver the money.
I suddenly remember that the oldest customer once told me
That the café must be as old as the monastery,
Because it has always been there
Just around the corner.

Still

Still, flat lines,
Drawing but eternally being drawn;
Our lives are so restless.
Romance with no name eats its heart out
And prays for satisfaction.
The sky opens up and drops new things
Onto our curiosity and boredom,
And we never give in
And we are never sorry.

I know you don’t want me to write right now,
But you’re nearly asleep – a moment of peace –
And I’ve never been so penetrated with emotions.
You kick me softly, once,
Twice and I drop the piece of paper,
That spreads its wings
As if nothing had gone wrong.

You can’t see me because you turned your back on me
But I’m awake already,
Wrapped in morning’s light
That even illuminates your corner.
You turn and the bed makes funny noises
And you yawn
And you sigh,
And the light fades into the other room.

Cracow by Night

We drink our beers in the slumbering of the city,
In the morning of the night
When the cigarette smoke that is the morning mist
Stains my vision as well as my lungs.
There's no music;
Only an alarm clock ringing in the form of a popular song
that cuts through all that is unconscious and of interest to me.
We dare not speak yet cause we fear our voices
haven't recovered from our last attempt.

I feel alone and abandoned like a little child.
I count the days your arms have stopped touching me
(I haven't the courage to count the other way around)
and know I will only need one hand,
Although I honestly feel like I need every single finger of you.

The music abruptly stops and I can think again.

I feel our desires meet, some place elsewhere,
that we can only travel to together,
but it is the desire of seeing you again
that cannot meet yours.

Another empty glass makes two more hands
and the table - poisoned with alcohol - tremble,
Raising so many urges,
Raising indolence to its feet.

I wished there was a mirror
to reverse or adjust my angle on this moment,
to reverse something that feels so irreversible.
I wish another person's joy was more understandable to me.

Morning ends
Today, as we carry ourselves through the streets
that whisper in a language I do not speak.
I'm once more struck by loneliness
and when I finally find my temporary bed,
It's the breathing of the unknown people
that keeps my solitude awake.

I Subside

Am always

drifting,

wandering,

till I

finally

drift off.

Castles, heroes, and so many made-up pictures of you;

Dragons, winged poets, a river of gold and your liquid body;

You talk to me for the first time that I can recall

And I hear it all in exclusively enticing rhyme and rhetoric.

Actual dilemmas appear on the surface of what is, like

I’m not sure whether the first poet alive wrote about

love or about the agony of a lost love;

It’s kind of like a “chicken and the egg” situation.

Voices of teachers,

mothers,

and superegos

pounding on my consciousness.

My mass-produced, easy-to-build and will-easily-fall-apart

desk has never felt more seductively soft than

Now. I raise my head to resist its treacherous temptation

but notice that the air of dreams around me is too heavy.

Mistakenly I think I’m counting the words on my page,

- how many more till completion? -

but I’m only counting the seconds, always slipping away

from me.